You’ve probably heard the exciting news that Silverfin is joining the Visma family. We caught up with our co-founder Tim to reflect on the company’s journey so far and get his thoughts on the future.
Q. As co-founder, how do you reflect on the last 10 years?
A. I’m incredibly proud of what Silverfin has become. It does feel a little surreal to think that this whole thing started with me, Joris, a white board and a big idea that accountancy was ready for digital disruption. And now here we are… 10 years later, Silverfin is a successful multinational technology company with a market-leading cloud platform.
The numbers speak for themselves really: 850 firms around the world today use Silverfin, from the big 4 to local single office firms, all of whom are supporting over 320,000 businesses on the platform. That’s no small feat.
Q. What do you think has been key to Silverfin’s success?
A. It may sound like a cliche, but you can have the best tech in the world, but it’s the people that really make the difference and have made Silverfin what it is today.
The team here are just so passionate and committed, and it shines through in everything they do.
Accountants, no matter where they are, value personal relationships. All along, we wanted to avoid being just transactional, and focus instead on connecting with the people we’re trying to help.
Q. And what about technology… how has Silverfin carved out a niche in the market?
A. There are obviously lots of dimensions to this, but I’d pick out four things which have helped to differentiate us.
1. Silverfin is customisable. We wanted to build a solution that was country-agnostic, so it could handle the different tax and accounting standards in each region. We came up with this idea of having a platform with core functionality, and a customisation layer that allows either Silverfin or our customers to easily build content for local market needs. That’s how we’ve scaled across 15 countries until now.
2. It’s an open API-driven platform too. We wanted the platform to be easy to integrate with. So partners can build products to work with Silverfin, and customers can easily connect it into their tech stack and different data sources.
3. We wanted to ensure a user-friendly experience that made it easy for non-technical accountants to get started. A lot of legacy software is a bit ‘clunky’ to say the least, and we felt accountants deserved better.
4. The last point is around structured data. This is really what Silverfin is all about. Connecting and automating compliance workflows, firm-wide reporting and analytics, AI… this is all made possible thanks to having data standardised into a single, queryable source of truth.
Q. Looking forwards, what factors are going to shape the next few years?
A. Two words… Artificial Intelligence! AI is obviously going to bring rapid and significant change to the profession, and all other sectors too.
From a product development perspective, we’ll be exploring all areas to see where AI can help accountants day-to-day – automating and speeding up tasks, uncovering insights, freeing up capacity so that more time can be devoted to creating new value for clients.
And of course this rapid progress in cloud-based technologies is just going to accelerate the demise of on-premise solutions. Any firm left relying on desktop software is going to be left behind.
From an industry perspective, I expect to see consolidation continue. And this is a trend which actually plays into our sweet spot: we’ve seen how after any merger or acquisition, standardisation is critical – of data, of processes and systems.
And not forgetting the battle for talent. Accounting, perhaps more than most sectors, faces a skills shortage. This challenge of how to attract, train and retain the right people will continue to be a defining factor, and underscores just why new technologies like AI are so critical.
Q. What can we expect from Silverfin moving forward?
A. In short, we’ll continue to do what has proved so successful so far. This means…
– Strengthening our market-leading position in Belgium: adding more powerful capabilities in areas like Silverfin Assistant, Insights etc to help our existing customers get more value from their ongoing investment in our software.
– Expanding our footprint in the UK. It’s exciting to see more and more firms joining us, a testament to our growing product portfolio. Recent launches of Corporation Tax and Silverfin Assistant have really helped build momentum, and there’s much more to come.
– Growing our product offering and presence in key emerging markets like the Netherlands and Luxembourg.
– And finally, continuing to be the partner of choice for large global firms who need the ability to develop localised compliance solutions for their markets – but crucially, built on a core cloud platform which can service multiple geographies in a standardised, repeatable way.
This is exactly why we created our unique low-code approach and ‘developer accountant’ tools, and we’re eagerly looking forward to expanding into new markets over the coming months with this proposition.
Exciting times ahead!